Computer systems can provide notifications, which can be text or other content displayed prominently to inform a user of the occurrence of an event, often soon after the event occurs. Users can create reminders that generate reminder notifications for events expected occur in the future. A computer system can maintain a list of reminders and presents notifications to the users when the events associated with the reminders occur. For example, a reminder alarm is a type of notification that causes a reminder notification to be displayed in a user interface when a certain point in time is reached. A geographic reminder is another type of notification, which causes a reminder notification to be displayed when the computer system is in a specified geographic location. An email notification can indicate that an email message has arrived by displaying a portion of the message. The notifications can be displayed as, for example, text that disappears after a short time period, or in dialog boxes that disappear when a user provides an input acknowledging the notification. Notifications can also cause sounds to be emitted from the computer system to draw the user's attention.